A Christian look at contemporary and classic literary fiction and culture

Sunday, August 17, 2014

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

“What would you do,” asks a
character in the movie “Groundhog Day,” “if you were stuck in one place, and
every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?” The
question is posed to Bill Murray, and the words sum up his life – he has been
sentenced, for some inexplicable reason, to relive Feb. 2, seemingly forever. The
humor for the audience is that we have all felt this way, for varying reasons,
probably more than once in our lives.

Several generations ago, this
same sentiment was expressed by the titular hero of Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson
Crusoe.” Finding himself shipwrecked on an island, alone except for the
occasional appearance of cannibals, Crusoe begins to take stock of what made
him come to this seemingly godforsaken island. He has misspent his life, he
thinks, and he can no longer run from the consequences. “Lord be my help, for I
am in great distress.”

What surprised me the most in
reading “Robinson Crusoe,” was how much of it was taken up with Crusoe’s
declarations of piety. Early in his time on the island, Crusoe understands
that, just as he is alive because of the Almighty, he has brought to the island
for some unknown reason. The reason isn’t merely repentance – like Bill Murray
in “Groundhog Day,” he is being changed. Which brings me to the second great
surprise in reading the book. Defoe has the difficult job of rendering Crusoe’s
26-year sojourn on the island in a way that will keep the reader interested. And
he is doing this within the confines of a newly created medium.

“Robinson Crusoe” was the great early document of
radical individualism, the story of an ordinary person’s practical and psychic
survival in profound isolation. The novelistic enterprise associated with
individualism—the search for meaning in realistic narrative—went on to become
the culture’s dominant literary mode for the next three centuries. Crusoe’s
voice can be heard in the voice of Jane Eyre, the Underground Man, the
Invisible Man, and Sartre’s Roquentin. …”

"Robinson Crusoe" is escapist fiction about a man who cannot escape. What Defoe does is give
Crusoe things to do, to fill time, and have him explain what he is doing, how
and why. We keep reading, and we do not feel we are treading the same ground or
merely filling time. We slowly see Crusoe change from the reckless ne’er-do-well
adventurer of dubious morality into a hard-hewn, patient man of confident integrity.
His labors are never-ending, and his mistakes are recounted so that we will
share in his feeling of triumph as he learns slowly to live on his own. He
decides that his is not the worst lot in the life, that he is master of the
island, and sets to imposing his own order. For half of his time on the island,
he grows in a budding faith. But he is still a man, conscious of his
limitations.

Then comes the footprint, and
the sure knowledge that he is not alone on the island. In what could be, for
some, a promise of hope, Crusoe experiences a moment of profound terror. Again,
Franzen, on the changing religious consciousness of Dafoe’s mother country:

“At the same time, England was rapidly becoming more
secular. Protestant theology had laid the foundations of the new economy by
reimagining the social order as a collection of self-reliant individuals with a
direct relationship with God, but by 1700, as the British economy thrived, it
was becoming less clear that individuals needed God at all. It’s true that, as
any impatient child reader can tell you, many pages of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ are
devoted to its hero’s spiritual journey. Robinson finds God on the island, and
he turns to Him repeatedly in moments of crisis, praying for deliverance and
ecstatically thanking Him for providing the means of it. And yet, as soon as
each crisis has passed, he reverts to his practical self and forgets about God;
by the end of the book... To read the story of Robinson’s vacillations and
forgetfulness is to see the genre of spiritual autobiography
unraveling into realist fiction.”

It was Franzen’s
account of reading “Crusoe,” on a desert island, while mourning his friend
David Foster Wallace, that made me want to read the novel. I think Franzen
overstates his case slightly on how far Crusoe strays at the end, but he is right
about his vacillations. As Crusoe observes after the discovery of the
footprint, all of the faith he had in God’s providence suddenly abandons him,
as though God has gotten him through everything to this point only to turn His
back on the castaway. But within a few pages, he is once again quoting
Scripture and stating that God will help him. With the appearance of Friday,
Crusoe is soon thanking God that he has been brought to the island.

The mode of
the book is that this is a "true" story, and in the details Defoe makes us
experience the sweat and isolation, the grinding solitude of existence. The
images are so vivid that they have stayed with us for centuries since, from “Gilligan’s
Island” to “Lost.” Could we survive on our own? Crusoe says no – in fact he
never would have survived if not for God, and never could have made it off the
island were it not for the mishaps with a mutinous crew that finally finds him.
Modern sensibilities find something familiar in Crusoe, because no matter the
circumstances, everyone knows loneliness, even if great crowds. The piety of
the castaway may have been expected in his day, but Crusoe learns more, such as
the inscrutable ways of God, which find renewal even in certain destruction:

“how frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil
which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is
the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance,
by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into…

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Brilliant Disguises is maintained by William Thornton, a writer who works as a reporter at an Alabama newspaper. I am a deacon in a Southern Baptist Church and teach a Sunday School class. I am the author of "The Uncanny Valley" and "Brilliant Disguises."

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I'm a reporter with the Birmingham (Ala.) News and the Alabama Media Group. You can read my reporting at al.com. I'm a Southern Baptist deacon and the author of "Set Your Fields on Fire" - http://www.amazon.com/your-fields-fire-William-Thornton/dp/1512721964/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1452519478&sr=1-1&keywords=set+your+fields+on+fire+william+thornton. You would profit from buying and reading it, you know? I know I would. Email me at wthorn7@hotmail.com if you'd like.